Perseverance and Endurance

So I figured I would post an update on some things going on in my life.

1) WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY

I accepted a friend's challenge to lose 20lbs for $20 in late September. Weighing in at 240 lbs on September 25th, this was my highest weight since being in my final months of pregnancy. I have struggled for years and I thought perhaps this was really the time I would change. But it has been so discouraging to have seen this yo-yo effect on the scale each week. Week 1 - down 4 lbs. Week two - gain 1 lb. Week three - down 2 lbs. Week four - gain 3 lbs. That 3 lbs weight gain really got to me. I really wanted to quit. I felt like all of my efforts had been for nothing. A whole month had passed and I was at 238? Why? I had been watching what I ate, going to gym, drinking water, and trying to ensure I got enough rest each night. I put my scale in the cabinet declaring I wouldn't take it out again until December 4th. (The end of the challenge.)

But I knew better than to say thing like that. I was angry and hurt and discouraged. The circumstances shook my faith and I found myself looking at the problem instead of the solution. Perseverance and endurance are heralded in the bible...but those character traits are not ones you just wake up with one day. They are character traits that God builds in a person willing to keep getting back up, dusting off and trying again. If I know that losing weight is about taking care of my body in honor of the Lord that gave me life, then the scale is not my dictator of what is or isn't success. Granted, getting to a healthy weight is important for health reasons, but I realized that I can't ride the emotional roller coaster aligned with the up and down scale results.

So this week, I lost 4 lbs. Go figure. I didn't even watch what I ate until Wednesday. I didn't go to the gym at all and I lose 4 lbs. But, I have decided to go back to the low-carb eating plan my doctor recommended a while back. With my family history of diabetes and the fact that my usual diet is predominantly carbs, it was something I could see benefiting me. I followed the Atkins plan several years ago and lost 25 lbs, so I know it works. Keeping to it stinks though because I LOVE my carbs! lol But oh well. I can do without pasta in every dinner. All my carbs now come from vegetables for now. I'll add some whole grains back in down the road, but for now, I'm retraining my body and mind to run on fuel rather than desire! I have 5 more weigh-ins and 16 lbs to lose to meet the challenge. I don't know if I can lose that much weight, but in the end, I have a lot more than 20 lbs to lose...so it's about the long term journey!

2) GRACE

I think my weight-loss journey has taught me a lot about grace. Yet, there are so many other things God has brought in and out of each day to teach me about His unconditional love and the motivation His sacrifice brings to my life. My husband is a wonderful instrument of His grace and so is my son. I can think of so many things I've done that warrants my family's anger and not their love, yet I wake up to a caring, warm and very loving family each and every day. My husband helps around the house by doing the dishes and helping with the laundry. He is getting our son ready for school each day, packing his lunch and taking him. He encourages me and always ensures that I know how much he loves me. My son is tender and sweet and writes these notes and puts them in envelopes. He draws pictures of just me and him with hearts. His hugs and kisses are so precious to me. He sure does love his mama! Even my dogs, with their slobbery kisses and happy tails wagging remind me that I am loved. To think that sin once held me in permanent death, but now I have the freedom to be propelled by the love of my Heavenly Father and am surrounded by evidences of His fingerprints in my world is simple indescribable.

In the end, what does that mean though? Grace is a motivator. My counselor talks about a passage in Romans that is the "comfort" and the "call". I have historically been great with the "call". I get rules and regulations and "have to's" and "ought to's" and "should's". But I have rarely understood "I get to..." in the context of a grace-motivated relationship. So I've taken some wonderful moments and here is my process:

A) I receive grace - be it from God, from my family or friends....

B) I deny selfishness - because that keeps me complacent

C) I chose a means of extending love - to my husband, my son, co-workers, friends...

D) I receive more grace

What I've learned is that this process reflects similarities to my weight-loss journey. It's three steps forward, two steps back. I will always receive more grace from the Lord than I give out, but when I try (and fall short), I progress. It might be slow and sometimes discouraging, but in the end....I'm seeing change slowly develop over time. Comes back to that character development. Perseverance and endurance. I can live by faith when I realize that I am loved apart from my performance and what I do becomes an outpouring of the character the Lord has developed and is developing!

So anyway...sorry for the long-winded update. Hopefully you are blessed to remember that life is a journey...along a winding road that almost seems to double-back sometimes. But it's important that we not forget Who authored the journey and that "now" is just one small spot on the road. Whatever you're facing...whatever the challenge or discouragement is in your life, there is a bigger picture to keep in mind. You can let Him pick you up, dust you off, and you can try again.

Giving Up...or Not

This morning proved to be very discouraging. Awoke with some nervousness about the weigh-in because I had not been to the gym my usual 4 times this week. This is week four of my challenge. In that time, I have only lost 5 pounds so far. I wanted to lose 3 this week; however, I doubted I would drop that many pounds because I had not worked out as hard as I have been. I still do not think I was prepared to see the number the scale though....

THREE POUNDS...I GAINED THREE POUNDS!!!

How in the world? That leaves me a month in and 6 weeks to lose 18 pounds (to successfully complete my 20lbs/$20 challenge). I feel so very discouraged. I hate that I have somehow allowed myself to get as overweight as I am. I have 103 pounds to lose to reach my ultimate target, but man...I can't even get the first 20 lbs off me!

Now, I'm trying not to stay in this discouragement. I heard a sermon this morning that reminded me that as a believer, it would be foolish to stay down. Defeat is not part of my born-again character. But how do I apply that? How do I get up once again, dust myself off and face this challenge head on? I don't know.

I do know that I have decided to put the scale away. I seriously hate that it has become a focal point for me in this journey. The focal point should be the Lord. So I'm refusing to weigh myself until December 4th. And if by the Lord's grace my choices of food and exercise result in success, great! If not, I have to keep coming back to the drawing board to figure out why.

So there you have it. Not much in the positive, uplifting category today, but I guess in the end, I'm really not giving up. Just whining a bit before I stand up, dust myself off, and try again.

Frustration

I am a bit frustrated. I have been "chewing" on this concept of grace and reflecting on the fact that I do not experience it the way I believe believers should experience grace! God has given me this undeserved, eternal, and unbelievable gift of life and relationship with Him. How does that not motivate me to live and walk in His unconditional love? Instead, I find myself trapped all too often in performance and legalistic adherence to rules.

What is it that I am holding to that is preventing me from moving under this umbrella of perfect love? I see it as the motivation to serve out of love and adoration rather than fear of condemnation. I see it as the motivation to obey out of love, not to avoid punishment or negative consequences. I see it as the power that changes me from the inside out... or perhaps I am at least trying to see it that way.

It seems this endeavor of mine to experience grace is rubbing against my idea of faith being about what I know rather than what I feel or experience. Experiencing grace, though, seems to be the concept of practical application of what I know to be true in the scriptures. Yet, here I am, knowing what I know to be true and STILL not experiencing grace. What am I missing?

Father, I am sorry that in so many ways, I am proud. Seeking to be self-sufficient....as if I can get some kind of handout from you and go on with life in my own strength. I cannot. You give me the very breath my lungs take in. You contract the very chambers of my heart that keep my body going. You created this day before me and orchestrated all the details of people, places and things in my life. Trouble gets sifted through your fingers in such a way that my depraved heart is molded and transformed into your likeness. I am sorry that I fail to see you in the light of Truth...how magnificent, majestic, mighty, and marvelous you are! I am sorry that the love you have extended me through Your Son is lost on this wretch of a woman that I am. Please open the eyes of my heart. Humble me and show me what it means to really and truly experience your grace in such a way my heart and life are radically changed. Whatever it takes to pry the deceit from this wretched sinner! Make me like your Son, Lord.

By His Grace...my weight loss journey

I think I've suffered writer's block for a while. So much has been going on lately, much of which could have written here, but I just couldn't seem to get it out! But today's topic I think will come out just fine: my weight-loss journey update.

If you've read my blog before (say...any time in the past couple of years), then you know this has been a battle I have faced my entire adult life. When I graduated high school, I was overweight, but lost 35 pounds in Marine Corps boot camp. I loved it! I weighed 136lbs, wore a size 7, and felt strong, confident and healthy! However, over the past 13 years, I have steadily gained weight each and every year. After leaving the Marine Corp, I packed on over 30 lbs in my first year in Texas. By 2002, I weighed in at 192 with little impact from occasional dieting. Then I got pregnant with my son and gained another 60 pounds during my pregnancy. Thankfully I lost all of that pregnancy weight within 6 months of giving birth, but that still put me at about 195. Then I went back to gaining weight each and every year - topping out at 240 lbs.

In the past few years, I have tried almost everything out there: Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, soup diets, bible studies, fasting, juice-fasting, liquid diets, SlimFast, power foods, pills and a few others. If I lost any weight during the "diet", it was minimal and came back within six months. The emotional roller coaster has been exhausting and unbelievably discouraging. Then came the Biggest Loser TV show.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Biggest Loser TV show has changed my life. But I have learned a few things that have contributed to putting me on the right road. One of the most important reinforced ideas is that there is a spiritual and emotional element to being obese that I cannot ignore. People as heavy as me don't get here without some serious underlying, and more than likely unacknowledged, issues. I have had to begin working through levels of pain, spiritual depravity and maturity in order to really get to a place where weight-loss is even possible. In that endeavor, I discovered a deeply rooted self-destructive motivation that undermines all of my life goals, including weight loss. I found selfishness, pride and idolatry had erected mansions in my heart. But the most startling realization was a fear of success. Yes, I said fear of success. Not fear of failure. Let's face it...I'm good at the failing part. Success means so much to me, but fear is a blockade that I have to understand in order to experience healing. And understanding that is where I am now.

So what am I afraid of you might ask? Well, first off, it is important to know what success equals. To succeed means to lose all this added, unhealthy weight and return to a slim, healthy, energetic me. My ultimate goal is 135. I remember what it was like to come home from boot camp and the reactions people gave to my physical changes. People showered me with accolades, but some of those accolades were hard to take. People who hurt me emotionally in the deepest of ways as a child, now had cause to send their attention my way again. Add that to my shipping off to the Marine Corps school where I was outnumbered 500 to 1 by men in my battalion alone (and almost all other battalions were male-only on that base), I found that the attention that at first seemed nice, flattering and affirming, really created a very deep, but strongly ignored, fear that perhaps there was nothing more to me as a person than my body. It seemed that although I ran from home to the military, I still couldn't escape that the only way I mattered to this world was because someone, somewhere wanted to use my body for their own purposes. Self-loathing and an unexplained anger took root and grew like cancer.

But that was more than 10 years ago, right? Yes, and I'm a very different person than I was back then. The Lord has redeemed me from the pit of hell and I am His now. Realizing what all that means in my life is a lifelong process though. I figured out recently that I still fear feeling what I felt back then if I were to become the healthy individual I desire to be. My skin crawls at the possibility that the attention from men that left with my waistline and muscle definition, might return. Then there is the prideful and selfish part of me that hopes it does anyway. In the end, I have to battle all of those lines of thinking. Fear puts me in bondage and pride and selfishness bar me from experiencing the depths of my God the way I am intended to experience Him. So where does that leave me with regard to the goal of losing this very unhealthy weight?

It leaves me depending on His grace and mercy.

Each and every day I have choices to make about exercise and food. If I make them out of fear or pride and selfishness, I defeat the overall journey I desire which is a journey to know the Lord and be known by Him and serve Him from now to all of eternity. I can't say I have a handle on making these choices without these negative motivations, but that is where grace comes in. When I make the choice to eat smaller portions of healthier foods and go to the gym and work out as hard as I can, I have to consciously make the effort to give glory to God. Yet, knowing my heart is deceitful above all else, I am left with nothing else but to know that God's grace covers me anyway. Being healthy is a matter of stewardship. I have been a horrible steward of this gift of a body that the Lord has given me. I have put junk into it, abused it, and failed to exercise it and keep it in tip-top shape because I had other agendas than taking care of/using all the gifts God gave me for His plan, purpose and glory. I'm never going to be perfect this side of heaven. But somehow, some way, I am seeking to discover what it means to be motivated by grace.

I began by making a small goal; I joined the 20lbs for $20 challenge my friend put out there. Endeavoring to lose 20 pounds by December 4th has had its ups and downs, but grace has kept me moving forward. Grace kept me from quitting when I gained weight in week 2. Grace kept me from quitting when I overate one day, so that I could make better choices the next day. Grace pushed me out of bed at 3:30 several times a week over the past three weeks, when all I wanted to do was stay in bed and sleep. Grace kept me from quitting when I stayed in bed and slept. Grace pushed me in the gym to keep trying when things were difficult. Grace kept me from mentally and emotionally battering myself when I didn't do as well in the gym. Grace reminds me that I am loved - not for my body, not because I worked hard or made the right food choices, not because I fit into a certain size, and not because I do or don't attract attention from others, but I am loved...just because God chose to love me! This grace keeps me focused that this is a long-term lifestyle change that I am trying to make, and one tiny step after one tiny step, I move toward the person I desire to be. A person who can let go of the past, be healed of her hearts iniquities, and live for Jesus Christ with wild abandonment.

I gain a little more of that person every day...but only by His grace!